Your Absence Only Brings Silence
by TheOtterKnight
Summary: What do you do when the person you could always count on isn't there anymore? In Percy's case, he hadn't noticed Nico's presence until he was gone, and by then, it was likely too late. He tries to cope with this. {/Pre-slash Percico. Percabeth. Post-BoO/HoO.\\}


**Disclaimer:** I am not Rick Riordan. I could never make the masterpiece that is Percy Jackson.

 **Pairing(s):** Pre-slash Percy/Nico. Percy/Annabeth. Implied Jason/Nico. Frank/Hazel. Numerous platonic pairings.

 **A/n:** You can also find this on AO3 under the same alias. I hope you can forgive me.

 **TW:** Mentions of PTSD, depression, suicidal thoughts, obsession behavior, unintentional abusive friendships, and major character death.

* * *

When everything is said and done, they settle into New Rome, planting themselves there like they've always belonged. It doesn't take long for them to get into a pattern, for them to integrate themselves into society, not that they needed to anyways, what with saving the world. It is still nice to know that they're accepted, though.

They have a nice house, with what Annabeth calls "curb appeal". Whatever that means. It is what she - they - want, so he picks it. It's different, going back to school and not expecting monsters to come breathing down their necks. Not that it wasn'tlikely, but it's strange not having to look over your back all the time. The point is, Percy goes back to school and learns. Sometimes he attends therapy for his likely PTSD, but most days he foregoes it. He's fought Kronos and Gaea and survived, he thinks he can handle his nightmares. At least Annabeth doesn't know.

They fall into a routine, something easy that they fallback on like it's they're saving grace, like it's their lifeline. The routine brings a sense of comfort, of ordinary that they've never really had before.

It makes him restless.

* * *

When drakon lurk beyond Terminus' borders, Percy is one of the first to go to defend them. Dakota, Gwendolyn and him make quick work, even if all Dakota does is slurp koolaid and drips it all over them. Whatever. At least the drakon seem to be disgusted with the smell of it.

* * *

The next time that Percy goes into battle, he almost doesn't make it out. It's a hydra that almost takes him down; he almost forgets the fact that they regrow their heads. Piper remembers though, and looks at him in confusion while he writhes, denying ambrosia and nectar. Some part of him enjoys this pain. He almost feels like he needs it. The need to feel alive. The darker part of him insists that this is what he gets for letting those countless others die. It is Travis who knocks him out of it, who force feeds him the ambrosia squares even when his body tries to eject it from his stomach. He feels tired afterwards.

* * *

Piper and Annabeth are watching him now, worried ever since he nearly let the hydra cleave his arm off. Despite his insistence that he's okay, they send him back to therapy, calling Grover back from his trip with Juniper to make sure he goes. He doesn't speak to the therapist.

* * *

Sally and Paul are there for his graduation from New Rome's school. Their presence is reassuring. She knows not to pressure him about his near death experience and only purses her lips in practiced worry, but Paul looks nearly fifty shades of concerned. Percy almost breaks down when he catches himself thinking that Paul has looked more worried than Poseidon ever did.

* * *

Rachel and Octavian are having a shouting match at each other when Percy removes himself from the infirmary when he's nearly a hundred percent healed. It's a wonder that Chiron even let him attend his graduation. They don't even grow quiet when Percy approaches, and instead somehow drag them into it. It's involving chocolate and the comparison between gummy bears and teddy bears, apparently. Or at least, that's what Percy got out of it. He ends up siding with Rachel - only because he's known her longer - and he thinks Octavian is ready to murder his new stuffed bear. Percy grits his teeth and somehow him and Octavian are threatening each other's stuffed animal collection. It is not his fault that he's grown attached to the stuffed bear; it replaces the panda that Octavian tore up, and serves as a double for Annabeth when she's gone. They settle their disagreement over the campfire, by Rachel who was listening the whole time and subdued Octavian by offering half a dozen of stuffed animals in sacrifice. Octavian must have been pleased because then he and Percy settle back into that familiar semi-tense friendship that they have. Percy finds that he's smiled more that day than in the whole month. He idly wonders when he stopped smiling.

* * *

Reyna registers the change in him. She seems to understand because now she takes him along on her trips when she patrols the border. They make small talk, but neither of them pry into the other's life. Percy finds her presence kind of comforting.

* * *

He gets into a fight with Reyna later; they draw swords and swing at each other, praetor against praetor. Frank tries to dissolve the fight, but Hazel draws him back, trying to convince him not to intervene. Percy ends up with a broken nose. He doesn't remember why they fought.

* * *

His therapist seems to think that something is wrong. Percy decides that he will deny it to his grave.

* * *

When he's sent to the infirmary again, Annabeth is beside him, scolding him with fearful grey eyes. He's almost died again. She seems to be convinced that he's on a suicide mission. She wants to know who he's trying to prove himself to. He can't answer. They sleep in separate beds for a long while after that.

* * *

Percy is struck with a fever halfway through autumn, so he is in a delirious state when he chances across an empousa. He seems to believe he's invincible, that he still bears the mark of Achilles, and grows reckless again. It doesn't matter though, because when the empousa goes in to deliver a fatal blow, she takes a good sniff of him and seems to grow disgusted. She scampers off pretty quickly after that. It is only much later that Percy realizes that he had seen through the mist and realized what she was, when he shouldn't have. He grows confused.

* * *

Percy doesn't get into fights anymore, but nothing is the same between him and Reyna. She watches him with half-lidded eyes when he approaches, and seems to let out a breath when he moves away. It is undeniably tense between them, but he can't bring himself to patch up the gap. He doesn't feel too guilty, actually.

* * *

Nearly a full year passes before he gets into a fight again. Even though the situation worsens between him and Reyna, it is not her that he fights. No, it is Jason. Percy finds the easiest thing to fight him over and when they do, the earth and sky protest. It is always dangerous when children of the big three fight, and they are no exception.

* * *

Jason doesn't speak to him for a whole month.

* * *

Clarisse tries to find an outlet for his anger, and seems to think that teaching the new recruits and demigods is the best answer. When Percy teaches them about keeping yourself concealed, he wears a dark, nearly black navy jacket, and dark sneakers, for emphasis. He finds himself reluctant to revert to his other clothes. The darker colors bring a strange sense of comfort.

* * *

Annabeth seems worried that his clothing seems to be getting darker. He explains that he's just trying something new. He says the same thing to his therapist. He doesn't think either of them believe him.

* * *

He visits Camp Halfblood again for the training sessions. When one of his trainees gets hurt, he finds himself reluctant to go to Apollo's infirmary. Chiron watches this unfold with worried eyes.

* * *

Halloween rolls around and when Percy sees the skeletons that the children hang up, he breaks down. He can't explain why.

* * *

Percy has taken to avoiding people altogether, sometimes leaving for weeks on end. Annabeth seems to be getting desperate.

* * *

It is Jason who finally approaches him, despite the bad blood between them. However, it is a joint effort when they all force him to go to therapy again.

* * *

Afterwards, he barely finds the energy to move.

* * *

When they explain to him why they think he's doing what he's doing, he resists and fights back. He denies the truth.

* * *

He loses sight of himself.

* * *

They keep him in the infirmary. They visit him for many days, encouraging and helpful. They never ask if he is okay, because they know he's not.

* * *

He can't bring himself to cry, even when the tears glisten in his eyes, unshed.

* * *

Percy sleeps and dreams.

* * *

When the therapist approaches him again, he says nothing. He is asked to draw something, and all he can draw is death and skulls and pomegranate seeds and other things that he shouldn't. The therapist's frown is large and seems to condemn him. He stays longer in the infirmary.

* * *

When they visit him again, they quietly ask why he hasn't attempted to get out. Percy, wearily, will reply that Nico always got him out of nasty situations. He's never seen Hazel cry so harshly before.

* * *

They sedate him. That's okay, because then he dreams. He dreams of Nico and his halo of dark hair. He wraps his arms around Percy and breathes into him.

* * *

They try to talk him out of it.

It doesn't work.

* * *

Percy sleeps and dreams. Nico is always there, and when he isn't, it's to darkness. It is okay, though, because the darkness is a part of Nico.

* * *

Percy cries and he doesn't know why.

* * *

Annabeth tacks pictures on his walls of them on dates. Pictures of Hazel and Frank and Leo, of Jason, Piper, Reyna, of Luke and Thalia, of everybody who had ever mattered to Percy. Except for the one who mattered most.

* * *

Hazel visits him, in the middle of the night. She stoops low over his bed, tears dripping down her face, as she begs for Percy to get better, that Nico wouldn't want this. Percy does not comfort her; he let's her cry.

He still hopes.

* * *

It will be by the third year that he breaks down. He will try to steal t-shirts from the infirmary's gift shop, wrapping himself in dark clothes and hugging himself until Annabeth is called.

He cries in her arms.

* * *

The following couple of weeks, they will try to integrate him back into society. He's calmer now, but he still checks every shadow he crosses, still looks over his shoulder for that gloomy son of Hades. Even though he feels a part of him shatter a little every time he notices the absence, he doesn't stop looking. He is defined by his loyalty, after all.

* * *

Percy, on his first day out of the hospital, spends time away from everybody. He goes to Camp Halfblood and sleeps in Cabin Thirteen, pressing himself into the blankets that still remind him of Nico.

It is all he has left.

* * *

Percy looks at himself in the mirror and is partly startled at who he sees. He is covered in dark clothing, shrouded in darkness, with dark bruises underneath his eyes from his restless sleep and his hair deshiveled. He has grown paler since his time in the hospital. Percy looks in the mirror and all he can see is Nico. He wonders where his own reflection has gone.

* * *

He mends his relationship with Reyna. Her sarcastic wit makes Percy ache in a way that reminds him of Nico. He thinks maybe that's why he fought with her.

* * *

Jason is more forgiving. He understands, he truly does. Or so he says. He still watches Percy with wary eyes, and tries to change him out of the the dark clothing and into the normal clothing that he's seen Percy in before. It doesn't work as well as he'd hoped, but it's still progress.

If Percy still resents Jason how close he had gotten to the son of Hades, well, Jason can live with that.

* * *

Rachel is the next person to help him. She soothes his temper and gives him a reason to fight. She isn't good at welding blades, but she accompanies him on border patrol, so he has a reason to protect something, a reason to survive. A reason to stop being so reckless.

* * *

Percy touches the small of his back sometimes, opposite his navel, and will smile. He still remembers how much Nico gave up to him so that he could get the mark of Achilles. It is strange not having it. He wonders if this is his attempt at keeping a part of Nico close to him.

* * *

He will touch the lock of grey hair that he has, and think to himself of how he'd gladly live with the burden of lifting the world for a single person, especially when that person had thought the world of him.

* * *

Percy realizes that he's slipped up. He is referring to Nico in the past tense now. It makes him unbearably sad. Annabeth notices and threatens to get the therapist again.

* * *

The next time he visits the Hades Cabin, he grows restless in the bed and in a fit, he will toss the blankets aside and stuff his face into the pillow. A crinkle of paper will sound and he will dig, out of the pillowcase, a Mythomagic card titled The Rage of Poseidon. He wonders if this means that Nico thought - thinks, he corrects himself- of him.

* * *

Sleeping in the Hades' cabin has reverted him back to his original state. When he looks into the mirror again, the lines of Nico and Percy blur together so much that he can't tell where Percy begins and where Nico ends. A part of him realizes how troubling that is. His reflection should be all Percy, not Nico and a pair of blue eyes and tall height.

* * *

Annabeth catches him and they ship him back to New Rome's hospital.

* * *

Percy still dreams of Nico.

* * *

The therapy gets intense because the therapist tries to pick apart and decipher why Percy is acting like this. It is obvious why.

* * *

Percy is slipping.

* * *

He knows that if nobody catches him, he will become a Nico copycat.

* * *

Piper and Annabeth gang up on him, dissecting his emotions and thoughts respectively. They can't seem to agree on why he acts like this and no one else does.

* * *

They come to a consensus that it's because he has always cared too much.

He laughs.

* * *

Grover is the one who seems to crack the case wide open. Because Percy had always unwillingly forgotten about Nico when he was around, he has taken to adopting Nico's habits, traits, and clothing style in an attempt to never forget him. Percy supposes that is close enough to the truth.

* * *

He has a dream that Nico and him are in a fight against Gaea's forces. When Nico gets trapped and turned to Percy for help like when Percy had turned to him so many times before, the son of Poseidon leaves. Percy wakes up screaming.

* * *

Things continue like this for half a year before Octavian approaches him, looking almost apologetic about tearing open Percy's new stuffed bear, but says that there may be a possible solution for this.

Everybody is already convinced that Nico died during the war against Gaea; everybody but Percy, anyways. Maybe it's time that Percy stopped ... whatever this was and brought himself closure.

* * *

Percy knows how the rest of the story goes. He feeds an offering to Hestia, goddess of the Hearth and Hope. He offers a bit of food to Pandora, too, while he's at it, for releasing hope in the first place.

It is hope that snaps him out of his grief, hope that he will find Nico and bring him home. Surely he isn't dead. Nothing has ever defeated him before.

Hope tastes like acid in his mouth, bitter and bruising but he welcomes it with open arms, like an old friend. Nico has always believed in him; now it's Percy's turn. He is determined to find the son of Hades, dead of alive. After all, it's what he had done when Percy had gone missing.

Percy knows that this is the right thing to do, and well, when he finds the son of Hades, he'll never let him go again.


End file.
